The opportunity to personalize features in a mobile vehicle is ever increasing as the automobile is being transformed into a communications and entertainment platform as well as a transportation platform. Many new cars will be installed with some type of telematics unit to provide wireless communication and location-based services. These services may be accessed through interfaces such as voice-recognition computer applications, touch-screen computer displays, computer keyboards, or a series of buttons on the dashboard or console of a vehicle.
Currently, telematics service call centers, in-vehicle compact disk (CD) or digital video display (DVD) media, web portals, and voice-enabled phone portals provide various types of location services, including driving directions, stolen vehicle tracking, traffic information, weather reports, restaurant guides, ski reports, road condition information, accident updates, street routing, landmark guides, and business finders.
For example, traffic and driving directions may be accessed through a voice portal that uses incoming number identification to generate location information based on the area code or prefix of the phone number, or to access location information stored in a user's profile associated with the phone number. Users may be prompted to enter more details through a voice interface. Other examples are web and wireless portals that offer location-based services such as maps and driving directions where the user enters both a start and end addresses. Some of these services may have a voice interface.
A telematics tracking system currently tries to track missing or stolen vehicles that have an installed telematics unit by obtaining missing vehicle data from the telematics unit. The telematics units of unsold vehicles are occasionally not configured, as configuration is often performed during or shortly after a vehicle sale. If the telematics unit of the missing vehicle is unconfigured, the telematics tracking system attempts to configure the telematics unit if attempting to locate the vehicle. However, if the missing vehicle has not been turned on recently, for example, in the last 24 or 48 hours, the configuration attempt fails and the telematics tracking system cannot obtain vehicle information. Information from missing vehicles with configured telematics units is not accessible if the telematics unit is off, incorrectly configured, or if the missing vehicle is out of the cellular area. The telematics tracking system can continue to make periodic attempts to retrieve information from the missing vehicle.
It is desirable, therefore, to increase the opportunities to track a missing vehicle with an installed telematics unit. It is desirable to provide a method, system and computer usable medium that will notify the tracking team if the telematics unit in a missing vehicle initiates a vehicle data upload request or a service request. It is further desirable to provide request-vehicle data, such as vehicle station identification, GPS data, vehicle color, model type and year to the vehicle tracking system within, a predetermined period of time, such as five minutes, of the vehicle data upload request or the service request to increase the probability of locating the vehicle. An increased probability of locating the vehicle may decrease insurance costs for dealerships and vehicle owners.